Kult

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Kult

Cover for Kult: Death is Only the Beginning

Designer(s) Gunilla Jonsson, Michael Petersn

Publisher(s) Paradox Entertainment, 7meCercle

Publicationdate

Third Edition, 2001 / 2004

Genre(s) Horror

System(s) Custom

Kult (role-playing game)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kult is a contemporary horror role-playing gameoriginally designed by Gunilla Jonsson and MichaelPetersn, first published in Sweden by ventyrsspel in1991 that became Target Games.[1] The first Englishedition was published in 1993 by Metropolis Ltd.. Thegame is no longer published in either language, thoughcopies can be purchased through secondary andspecialized markets. Kult is notable for its philosophicaland religious depth as well as for its mature andcontroversial content.

Contents1 Setting

1.1 Entities1.2 Disappearance of the Demiurge1.3 Realities

2 Rules2.1 Mental Balance2.2 Combat2.3 Magic

3 History3.1 Current publishers

4 Controversy5 Spin-offs6 Notes7 External links

SettingThe default backdrop of Kult is modern-day real-life larger cities; players taking the roles of contemporarymulti-genre protagonists, such as private investigators and femme fatales, vigilantes and drug dealers, artistsand journalists, or secret agents and mad scientists. [2] In the game, however, all this and the entire world wesee, is an "illusion" held together by monotheistic belief which is unravelling to reveal a darker backdropwhere nightmarish monsters lurk, called "reality" in the game. This illusion was created by the Demiurge tohold humanity prisoner and to prevent mankind from regaining the divinity it once had. In the absence ofthis Demiurge, sinister forces plot to keep us from realizing the truth, or even to plunge the world into anapocalyptic war to restore humanity's ignorance and blind faith in the divine order. [3]

Entities



The notion of an originally divine mankind being held captive by sinister forces is borrowed fromgnosticism. The cosmological backdrop of Kult is largely based on the Tree of Life from kabbalistic lore,the Sephirot and the Qliphoth. It is balanced with the Demiurge and his Archons on one side and Astarothand his Death Angels on the other. Each Archon or Death Angel represent a value, group or an action (aidorganisations, child abuse, mafia, apathy, judicial systems, etc.) over which they have great influence. TheArchons and Death Angels have various creatures and cults (thereby the name of the game) to do theirbidding and promote their values. Many of these are our jailers who work to maintain the Illusion. Many ofthe adventures revolve around how these entities' conflicts affect the player characters and the world aroundthem.

Disappearance of the Demiurge

One of the more central elements of the game is that the Demiurge has disappeared since just before the20th century, and since then Astaroth, the Archons and the Death Angels have been struggling for power.Many entities have vanished since, and the Illusion has been weakened. The game leaves a lot to theimagination of interpretive game masters regarding reasons for the Demiurge's disappearance as well as theearlier mentioned divinity of mankind.

Realities

The game concept relies on there being several realities that may appear when the Illusion shatters:Metropolis, the original city which interconnects with all great cities; Inferno and its purgatories, wherehumans are held captive and tortured after death; and Gaia, which connects to nature and nature'sdestructive forces.

RulesThe system is a skill based system utilizing 20-sided dice (unrelated to the d20 system used by Wizards ofthe Coast for their Dungeons & Dragons rpgs), with point based characters. In the game, a natural 1 usuallyis great success with added bonuses and a natural 20 means a complete failure. Normal characters usuallyhave skill ranges of 3 to 20; to succeed in a skill roll, the player need to roll equal or below his character'sskill. The lower the player rolls below the skill number, the greater the success. Extraordinary charactersand inhuman entities can have skill values far above the normal range.

Some symbols and creatures appearing in Kult can also be seen in other Swedish games to which the Kultauthors and production team also have contributed. The Mutant Chronicles universe (created by NilsGulliksson and Michael Stenmark) its spin-offs share creatures such as Nepharites and Razides whichappear in the game.

Mental Balance

Central to the game is the aspect of Mental Balance, which is a sanity-gauge of sorts. In the game'scosmology humans can - at least in theory - regain their lost divine status through a game concept calledAwakening in which characters with an extremely high (or low, the game never values positive or moraltraits higher than negative or immoral ones) mental balance are no longer restrained by the rules of theIllusion. Effectively, they escape the prison and become gods. Continued play at this point is outside thefocus of the game, however.



The closer to equilibrium the character is, the more he is anchored in everyday human reality and the harderit is for the character to see through the veil of The Illusion to the true reality beneath. On the other hand,this protects him from becoming traumatized or insane. The further from this balance point (zero) thecharacter's Mental Balance gets, the more easily he or she will become emotionally and mentallyunbalanced by shocking events. A Kult character can have positive or negative mental balance affected bytraumata, influence from creatures or places, or by advantages and disadvantages. The advantages anddisadvantages are typically talents and traits that work for or against the character, such as (on the positiveside) having animal friendship, artistic talent, body awareness, a code of honor, or (from the negativespectrum) being socially inept, suffering from a drug addiction, sex addiction, paranoia, mystic curse orsimilar.

Both an unusually high or unusually low (+25/-25) Mental Balance will affect how normal people andanimals react to the character in question. The further the character strays away from the zero point, themore sociopathic, strange or eccentric he becomes, as he sheds his human quirks and viewpoints andbecomes more inhuman. Characters with a very high or very low Mental Balance will start to involuntarilymanifest outward physical signs of their ascent or descent; they become either detached saints or Children ofthe Night. If Mental Balance ever reaches +500/-500, the character Awakens and regains their true potential.

Combat

There are two different official rulesets for combat. The second and third English edition rules use a systembased on Damage Effect Factors (DEF).

Magic

Kult's magic system is largely drawn on the same real-world occult belief systems as some modern magicksocieties. Sorcerers can cast spells from one (or rarely more) of five different Lores; Death, Dream,Madness, Passion and Time & Space. Because these spells have (very) long casting times (up to severaldays), highly specific and exacting verbal, material and somatic requirements, and can only be cast insidethe sorcerer's consecrated temple, these spells are actually more like quasi-religious rituals.

HistoryKult was originally published by the company Target Games in 1991 as a Swedish role-playing game, andhas later been translated into several other languages. Kult has been published in Swedish, German, English,Italian, Polish, Spanish and French.

Metropolis Ltd. published the English-language game through three editions and new supplements, withnew US background and a revised page design and editing led by Terry K. Amthor

The third English edition of Kult had two English books released in print form: a player's handbook named"Kult Rumours" in 2001 and the core rulebook, subtitled Beyond The Veil, printed in 2004. Both currentlyout of print.

Current publishers

Currently, Kult is owned by Paradox Entertainment with no known licensor.



The last active publishers was 7me Cercle (English and French) and Raven Distribution (Italian).

ControversyIn Sweden, Kult has been noted by the general press several times, and in 1997 the Kult core rules wasquoted in a motion in the Parliament of Sweden.[4][5] The motion was to stop taxpayer funding of youthgroups that were active with role playing. It refers to a murder in a small town in southern Sweden calledBjuv, where a 15-year-old was killed by two 16- and 17-year-old friends who (according to the legalmotion) were influenced by Kult.

Critics of role playing games have also have tied Kult to a 16-year-old Swedish boy who committed suicideby shotgun in November 1996.[6]

The local newspaper Tnsbergs Blad in Tnsberg, Norway similarly used Kult in relation to thedisappearance of a boy called Andreas Hammer on July 1, 1994. Andreas Hammer allegedly played Kult theweek prior to his disappearance. He is still missing.[7]

Spin-offsKult Collectible Card Game by Bryan Winter.In August-November 2011, Dark Horse Comics released a 4 issue mini series based on the RPG.[8]

Notes1. Speltidningen.se (http://speltidningen.se/artiklar/pdf/kult.pdf) (Swedish)2. Kult, 1st edition, Book one (The Lie), pp 223. Kult, 1st edition, Book three (The Truth), pages 3-54. From the parliament archives (http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/index.aspx?

nid=410&typ=mot&rm=1997/98&bet=Kr501) (Swedish)5. Bjorn.foxtail.nu (http://bjorn.foxtail.nu/rollspel/krit_motion.htm) (unofficial source). (Swedish)6. Aftonbladet.se (http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,246481,00.html), (Swedish)7. Pub.tv2.no (http://pub.tv2.no/dyn-nettavisen/arkiv/?archiveSection=765&archiveItem=140520), Nettavisen.

(Norwegian)8. Darkhorse.com (http://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/18-460/Kult-1)

External linksKult (role-playing game) (https://www.dmoz.org/Games/Roleplaying/Genres/Horror/Kult) at DMOZParadox Entertainment (http://www.paradox-entertainment.com/)The Last Cycle - Active KULT Forum (2011) (http://www.kult-rpg.com/)

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Categories: Contemporary role-playing games Horror role-playing games Swedish role-playing gamesRole-playing games introduced in 1991

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